One of St. Joseph’s Hospital greatest attributes is its commitment to research. That commitment extends to St. Joseph’s Children’s Health Center (CHC), allowing the CHC to lead the way in the advancement of pediatric care.
Research is continuously producing new treatment options capable of preventing, managing and diagnosing diseases and conditions. Many research projects occurring at the Children's Health Center are in collaboration with the Barrow Neurological Institute® Neuroscience Research Center and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix. Key studies include:
Neurology
The CHC is collaborating with St. Joseph’s Barrow Neurological Institute on research that may offer hope for children with seizures that cannot be controlled by current methods of treatment. Dr. Jong Rho, a pediatric neurologist at the CHC and Barrow, and his research team are studying the ketogenic diet (KD) - a high-fat, low-carbohydrate and low-protein diet - and its anti-seizure and neuroprotective effects for children with intractable seizures. Barrow is one of a few centers nationally that has received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research KD and epilepsy in children. Studies of KD may have implications for treating not only epilepsy but also conditions such as dementia, head trauma and neurodegenerative problems.
Neurogenetics
The Pediatric Neurogenetics Center collaborates with TGen to conduct highly sophisticated genomic research. The goals of the program are to discover the genetic basis of neurological disorders and to contribute to the understanding of the molecular origination of neurogenetic disorders. The CHC’s partnership with TGen affords state-of-the-art genomic linkage studies for gene identification, mapping of chromosomal break points, and genomic imprinting. The collaboration also serves as an impetus for clinical trials at St. Joseph’s, offering patients expanded treatment options.
